...and back

It struck me that it has been about forty-five years since I sat in an airplane seat next to my mother. Sure, it's because I was hugely independent, even before I could legally vote or drink (in Europe no less), but, too, it's a reflection of the way life moves forward for many of us. I mean, you tell me -- when was the last time you flew in an airplane with your mother? (With my own daughters, I keep pushing things forward by offering up all my saved miles, just so that they'd be there next to me, husbands, kids and all.)

So I have some trepidation. I well remember the first flight I ever took with my mother. It was from Poland to Bulgaria and I carried along a pillow (I was only six) and threw up all over everyone in flight and then, to boot, left my pillow on the airplane and made such a scene about it that the poor woman had to get back on the plane and search for it. In those days (1959) you could do that.

This time, things are slightly different. The worry is on me.


I get up early enough to grab some bits of something at the Holiday Inn (it's free in a town where not much is free).






And then we use all her saved up senior vouchers to ride in style (in a cab) to SFO (San Francisco International Airport). I look out the window as she recounts the morning's various peccadillos. She is not sentimental about leaving, even though Berkeley has been her longest home of her long life. The Bay Area is before me. I am the one who is turning the pages for us both.

(From a speeding cab, looking over the bay...)






(And here's a lucky shot: from between the cables of the Bay Bridge, I catch this memorable image...)





No cars on the roads on Sunday. What can be a three hour trip, turns out to be a mere 29 minutes.



My mother doesn't use a wheelchair. Still, I feel she should just sit in one and let someone navigate her through the chaos of a big airport. 

But she insists. She can walk!

No wheelchair.

Perhaps it is my mother's hard determination that got her this far. Who am I to question things now. We walk.

And we navigate the TSA hurdles. Her carry-on is bulging! The zipper wont close. One must patiently remove the stuff that looks benign, but, well, you just can't take that with you, mom.

We are through. And early! No problem. She does her normal Sunday routine, one that she has done for how many decades now? She buys the fat Sunday Times and she settles in to read.






And now, on board at last, time to work iPhone selfie magic! (It may be her first.)






Engines roar, up we go.

Every city has a symbol that's meaningful to the visitor. If you live there, everything is just wallpaper, but if you visit, you look out for icons of what is heartfelt and important. The Luxembourg Gardens are my Paris anchor. Chicago? The brilliantly efficient El trains! San Francisco has the Golden Gate Bridge. The ocean to the west, the gentle waters reaching the tightly built towns of the Bay Area -- Berkeley, Oakland. The redwoods to the north, and to the south -- this improbable city, San Francisco, which, like Venice, was built even though it should never have been built (hills? earthquakes? no problem!).

And so I'm happy to see this graceful bridge out my window one last time. A little fogged over, a little far, but visible nonetheless.






Our flights are good, but the day is long. There's the layover in Salt Lake City.






We eat a combo lunch/dinner...





... then wait again because, you know, I made sure we had lots of time to connect.



At long last, by evening, we are in Madison.

My mom has to stay in a hotel tonight. (The farmhouse stairs are steep and inhospitable to anyone over the age of 73. Too, the walk from car to house has to be done with speed and alacrity. The bugs will eat you, baggage and all, if you dawdle.) I booked her a room at Madison's best, not because she cares (she doesn't), but because the hotel is empty and thus cheap tonight, as opposed to all those motels by the convention center that are booked solid because of the National Junior Angus Show.  I tell her she has a grand view onto the lake, but she is not a view person. And tonight, she is just tired.

(It is heading to be a stellar sunset!)

 


I'm hoping she'll rest. Tomorrow morning, I move her in to her new home in Madison.

to Berkeley

California. Who would think that I have such strong familial associations with the state! I tout my ties to Europe, to Poland, to New York -- all to the east of me -- but California to me feels remote. I admire aspects of it. I like its magnificent coastline, its tolerance for a funky lifestyle. I like the fruits that come to Wisconsin from there when we ourselves can't grow much in the winter months. There's a lot to like. From a distance.

Not so for at least a handful of members from my family. My uncle, my grandma and my mother all eventually settled there, all in the Bay Area, all choosing the good climate over whatever ties they had to places in the east. Until now. My mother is 94 years old and the time has come for her to give up on the year round sunshine and move closer to where I can keep tabs on her.

A downtown Madison apartment became available and it's more or less ready for her arrival. Today, I'm flying out to San Francisco to pick her up and bring her back to the Midwest. If all goes well, this will happen tomorrow.

So, this weekend brings with it a quick trip to the west coast.

An early predawn departure (with a lovely view of a morning  Madison skyline on the drive to the airport)...






A quick layover in Minneapolis, and then that magnificent flight over a land that is so vast, so plentiful, so endangered...











My travels are without issues. The weather is magnificent: you could not ask for more sunshine on either end of the trip. Though I haven't much time for actually doing anything that smacks of tourism, nonetheless, I do ride the BART train from the airport to Berkeley and it does pass through downtown San Francisco and so I disembark for one last walk through a city that I've visited so often, but am not likely to come back to in the near future. Hello pretty and hugely expensive San Francisco!






I turn my back to the downtown proper and head for the ferry landing. There is an indoor-outdoor market, with a view toward the Bay Bridge. Even though much of it is overwhelmed by tourists (I know, I know -- I'm one of them!), it's still rather lovely here.

I realize that I'm actually quite hungry. That Minneapolis Starbucks oatmeal didn't have the staying power I would have liked. But even though this city is prohibitively expensive, there are cheap alternatives and they're good alternatives! At the market, I pick up a combo lunch of carrot-ginger soup, with a side of seaweed, burdock, daikon radish, soybeans and who knows what else.  True, I eat it on a bench outside and out of a box, but the views over the water are splendid and I feel I'm eating stuff I could not find back home. The tab? $10 for what is a copious lunch.

The outdoor market is not unlike a summer market in southern France: there are a lot of ripe, exquisite peaches, nectarines, apricots.





I try not to be jealous of this. We do have plenty of peaches in Madison right now, but California ships them when they are very unripe. Sometimes they'll ripen to perfection on my kitchen counter. Sometimes they'll shrivel and give up the ship.  Here, peaches are sold at their most perfect moment of sweetness.

(They offer free samples. I eat many.)






The indoor market has a ceramics shop that I've grown to love because, well, a daughter loves it. My farmette breakfast coffee cup is chipped. Time to replace it with one from here! (No one could possibly afford more than one cup from this place. This is fine: we need only one. Ed does not drink coffee.)






I turn back toward the BART train stop.  Oh, yes -- funky California. You can ride your bike creatively here.






And I have to smile at the act a couple of guys do on the train itself. In Paris, the commuter train may have a person playing the violin or accordion for money. Here, someone is blasting rap and his buddy is doing acrobatics. He tells his train audience -- if you'e scared of black people, this dance is not for you. So clever! The car has a lot of white people returning to Berkeley. They demonstrate their absolute enthrallment with the "dance" by giving generously at the end of it.






I, too, get off in Berkeley, though I touch just the edge of it, bypassing the downtown, the campus, the commercial end of things.

I walk instead past the small cottages, all valued at perhaps several million dollars because, well, that's how things are in the bay area. On the upside, the flowers in some of the gardens are beautiful.










You get the feeling that people here really love color. And why shouldn't they -- it's with them ten months out of the year.






And, they have no mosquitoes.






My Holiday Inn Express is the same as every other motel of this sort. But I am grateful that if there is a view to be had from any of its windows, I come close to having it -- toward the campus that lies just at the base of the hills.





I feel I've come full circle. I first traveled to this town on a family road trip when I was a kid (we saw the USA in our Chevrolet), then returned as a young adult as I considered my graduate school options. (In the end I rejected Berkeley because it felt too far from my home base which, at the time, I still considered to be Europe. )

I'm glad I didn't come here. As I told my shocked mother -- I think the fact that the weather is the same ten months out of the year is such a drawback! (Our exchange on this point reminded me of the David Sedaris article I read while flying here: in it he tells some gun dudes in North Carolina that in England, where Sedaris lives, someone was arrested for shooting a burglar in his own home. The gun dude said -- I can't believe it! What is this world coming too!  Same story, different reaction depending on your mindset.)

Still, I understand that my mom has grown both used to this perpetual sunshine and very fond of it. Moving is never easy. Moving away from a place where she developed her patterns of a senior life -- ones that have served her grandly since, well, she's 94 and still explaining the ins and outs of life to her younger daughter (Mom, go to sleep. you can read my blog in Madison!) -- all this is hard, even for someone who has crossed the ocean many times in her life (though not as many as her younger daughter).

She has packed and shipped stuff earlier in the week. Today we just close suitcases (no small task) and make sure nothing's forgotten. And then we go out to her favorite place for dinner -- Luca's, just a few blocks from her home, my grandma's home too, and so a family home of sorts...





And I walk her back to it, this home she chose for herself for so many years.

We'll meet up early, because, well, most people who are moving across the country when they are 94 want to get to airports early.

leaving San Francisco

This morning, I glanced out just at the hour of the sunrise and noted that wisps of fog penetrated deeper into the Bay. The fog will lift, but the morning will be particularly cool.






I zip up my fleece. (By late morning, I'll have tucked it away into my bag.) One more pic from the hotel room. How about a selfie, taking in the windows that are such a heavenly asset here?





I have a series of flights today. To Salt Lake City. To Minneapolis. And finally, very very late -- to Madison. But do I have time for anything in the city? I must be at the airport before noon. Is there a walk I can take?

At such an early hour, on a weekend, I expect the city to be very quiet. But I've done the big walk already -- hugging the coast, then cutting through the heart of San Francisco -- so where to today?

I've been thinking I want to visit the bakery, Tartine. My daughter put me on to their cookbook last Christmas and I thought then that if ever I was in the city of its origin, I should pop in. The trouble is that it's in Mission District of San Francisco -- a hefty walk from where I am by the shore (estimated at just over an hour) and not an especially pretty walk: it cuts through a rather down and out area of town, before hitting another area of mild gentrification. I could take the subway there, but the point is to walk.

I hoist up my backpack and sling the bag of spare clothing over my shoulder. San Francisco has many faces. I'm about to explore some less well presented ones.

First, I cut through the rather empty-ish downtown.





But within a dozen blocks, the architecture changes. I begin to pass closed storefronts and the number of homeless or down and out men (mostly men) increases exponentially. I pass an AIDS center and a Red Cross center and hotels that should not be called hotels. I wonder if real estate values plummet and rise, like a see saw going from the favored to the disfavored. There is not a single commercial venue that I would willingly enter. (Safety is not a concern: I'm walking along a main drag. No one is interested in my presence. For a minute I consider the possibility of being regarded as also without a purpose or shelter. Why else walk through here loaded down with two bags? I have long put away my camera.)

I can't really comprehend this kind of disparity in a city such as San Francisco. As I gradually leave behind this sad neighborhood of sad looking people, I pass a clock on a building that appears to have some Twitter connection. Five young people are doing some jumping jacks and high kicks, right there on the street. Warm ups I'm guessing, before they break into a run. Cyber, high tech types -- I'm sure of it. Do they run through here on the way to work? Do they notice? Do they jump over the people on the street?

Of course, I am like them, not in terms of cash value, but in terms of life's good fortune. I'm looking not for food and sustenance but for a prized bakery, for God's sake!

From there I turn south and now I'm in the Mission District, so named because of the presence of San Francisco's oldest standing building (late 1700s) -- the Mission San Francisco de Asis. This building:





I think I visited it in the past. I have little interest in going inside now. You have to pay. Too, there is such controversy about the role of missions in California -- whether they brought education to the indigenous populations here (a good thing) or merely used the local people as slave labor, suppressing what remained of indigenous culture. But really, I often don't enter buildings I'm supposed to enter on my touristy walks. And now I stare outside at a sign posted in the grassy strip bordering the church: it says to please keep your dog off, because there is rat poison in the grass. For some reason this just strikes me as absurdly wrong and so I move on, with only the one photo to take away with me.

The Mission District homes are interesting. I see signs of Latin culture and there definitely are the punk hangouts and music venues, still ever present, but with the dot.com boom, along came the money and many (though not all) houses have taken on the fresh look of something not so middle class.





Still, it is an interesting neighborhood and the mixture of cheap an punky with a little more pricey seems to work for now.

I am finally at the Tartine bakery. I see there is a line snaking out the door. That's fine -- I have time. Some people come to buy cakes and pastry to take home (bread is sold later in the day, just before dinner), but many, like me, want to eat something on the spot. There are a few tables packed into the small room where the sales take place and there is a wooden counter along the window. No one stays long -- it's not a come and chat place, it's a come and eat and move on kind of situation.

The line moves ever so slowly forward. I notice that iPhones and tablets make for an easier waiting time...






Too, you move past the window that looks into the kitchen. That's kind of fun.






Once inside, I'm in a tizzy. What to eat??? I don't have any meals planned for today. I don't want a sugar overload. Here's a display case:






I smile at a young couple who obviously want to eat it all! (And they do, they really do.)






In the end, I decide against the brioche, the pain au chocolat, the morning bun. I pick  (organic!) muesli with (organic!) yogurt for the healthy part and then the very lovely (organic!) strawberry tart for the indulgent part. I eat standing up, by the window, but that's okay. I'll have time to sit on my various flights later today.






It is a lovely breakfast/lunch. I pick up a simple brownie for Ed. We'll probably share it for dinner (in addition to the free Luna bar and apple from the hotel that I 'm saving for the flight home).  Tartine deserves its exalted reputation! (I notice that the line is even longer as I leave in what is now the late morning.)






So what should be the last photo from the Bay Area? How about of these quiet blocks of the city -- I like them best, both in San Francisco and Berkeley. You can see what's blooming here now!






It's an easy BART connection from here to the airport. And soon, on this beautiful spring day, I'm on my way to Salt Lake City.

I include photos from above because I always feel so lucky when the skies are clear and I can see the country below me. So many of America's cities have more similarity than difference (San Francisco is not one of these), but when you look at the landscape, you understand that we live in a vast and differentiated place.

Here's the Bay area again -- the fog again rests over the Golden Gate Bridge, in contrast to the Bay Bridge (do you see both of them?).






One last look and we turn our attention inland.  The approach to Salt Lake City is fascinating. I don't think I have to explain what's what...






I was eight years old the last time I passed through Salt Lake City. It was on a road trip with my parents and we saw the USA in our Chevrolet (well, not really ours, but close enough). I had my first salt water taffy. I remember little else. Now, I can't take my eyes off the lake and, of course, the mountains.






And now I am on the last two legs of my trip -- to Minneapolis and then to Madison. I'm posting from up high. Travel has changed greatly in recent years. I have to say: and that's a good thing.

SF - Berkeley

A longtime Ocean reader may remember how much trouble I sometimes go to just to catch a sunrise. I am in love with sunrises, even as I know most people find sunsets far more beautiful. For me, a sunset is melancholy. A sunrise brings with it an opportunity to face a new day with a smile.

This morning, I have, without question, the easiest sunrise capture of my entire life. I could have taken this photo (just before the sun cracked the horizon) from my bed.






I do get up, take two steps to the window and watch the most glorious day's beginning.






After, I crawl back into bed and contemplate the beauty of the mildly misty morning.

But not for long. I'm still on Wisconsin time. A sunrise at 6:30 here really feels like 8:30 to me and I am never in bed at that hour. Too, I can see how northern California really inserts that healthy living bug under your skin. I am to meet my Mom in the late morning. Shouldn't I use these early hours to do something invigorating? Perhaps join the hoards jogging or biking, or doing something equally energetic?

Oh! I live up to that challenge alright! After taking a large swig of the orange water in the hotel lobby (it's either that or cucumber water -- both always available; I asked if they believed cucumber water to be especially healthy - they answered that they were following the lead of spas and places that made a point of studying these things)...






...and I set out.  It is a glorious morning! Still nippy in the early hours, but absolutely dazzling!






I hug the shore and walk. And walk. And walk. Past the piers where the ferries come in, past seemingly deserted piers, too. Walk. All the way to Fisherman's Wharf -- a set of commercial amusements that I find significantly less interesting than New York's Coney Island and much more tacky than Boston's Faneuil Hall. Think: the hugest multistory Applebee's ever (among other dining pleasures) and Ripley's Believe It or Not.

It's a little tamer to be here in the early morning. And if you stray toward the water, you might catch the racket the seals are making here...






Or, you can gaze toward the foggy bay and contemplate Alcatraz.






Or, you can poke your nose into a warehouse of a crab distributor. Ship these to your friends back home!






I continue along the shore and up the path toward Fort Mason, where theoretically you could come face to face with the Golden Gate Bridge. But on this morning, like on many mornings, you have to accept the fog's domineering hold over the Bay.






And now it's time to turn back. I look at my little map. My, but it's a long walk back! And I still need my breakfast. And there's this pair of cheap sneakers I want to pick up off of Union Square and darn it, whose idea was it to put so many hills right in the center of this city?






I go up and down Russian Hill (with that crooked street that everyone loves to photograph)...






Then up and down the hill in North Beach and here I finally do pause for a far less expensive breakfast at a local cafe where, too, they still draw hearts and flowers in your coffee cup.






I have the local (organic!) yogurt and granola (also organic!) and berries along with my cappuccino.






Up Nob Hill, down Powell Street and finally to the sneaker store and now three hours into my walk, back to my hotel where I dump everything and quickly go back to the main drag where I catch the BART...






... to Berkeley.

Yes, Berkeley, where the cottages are so very interesting to look at and the flowers bloom profusely -- despite the drought (my Mom suggests that Berkeley has less of a drought problem than central California, though of course, all these regions are very interdependent).
















My Mom and I have a lot that we must discuss and review, but we still take time to visit a neighborhood to the south, where we do some minor strolling and window-shopping and where, too, we sit down to a Mediterranean salad lunch...






Back at her home, we talk, and we visit with her best pal too, and finally, as dusk brings again the cool air from the sea, she and I go to a local Italian place to eat a dinner that we've eaten several times before -- always the eggplant parmigiana dish for her, because the taste for it has stayed on her palate for a long long time.

I leave you with just one last photo of a flower we passed on our way to dinner: a jasmine, as fragrant as you could wish for on this lovely April evening. Yes, pungent with the aromas of another world, another time.